making memories through food, wine and travel

Special Thursday Night Edition–Holland Style

Today we continued our tour of Holland with Appelmoesand Slavinken. 20 inches of snow gave Mr. N a snow day, and me too, and so we decided to cook a day early. Mom picked the recipes and they were awfully good winter fare.

Appelmoes is, I suppose, the Dutch word for applesauce, and this was good and very easy to make. I peeled the apples and Mr. N willingly diced them. Last week he was petrified of the knife, but today he started grabbing for it and talking like he was an old pro who sliced and diced things all the time. Quite a lot of progress in a week, I was proud of him. Nervous though, and nervous his little sister’s gonna want to start chopping things too. While Mom finished dicing, Mr. N juiced the lemon, then drank the excess straight! Miss A wasn’t so keen on that. A little bit of spice, a little bit of microwaving, and a little bit of mashing and we had Appelmoes.

The slavinken was easy too, easier to make than to spell. A little bit of ground pork, 4 different spices, mix it up and wrap it in prosciutto. We added some pepper too, and I think we could have added a bit more. We don’t usually cook with marjoram but this calls for a lot of it. No garlic or onion in this mix, so it tastes different than Italian sausage which we have a lot more often. The kids liked rolling the sausage mix into the prosciutto, and it’s easy enough for them to do. I think the recipe envisions thicker wraps than we wound up with, but whatever the kids wanted was OK with us. Then it cooks for about 15 minutes in a pan. The recipe calls for bacon or prosciutto, and I think bacon would have made it greasier than it turned out with prosciutto. I don’t know if that would have been better or not.

Everything turned out well. I gave the appelmoes and the slavinken 3 spoons, and so did Mr. N. Mom gave 3 spoons to the appelmoes and 2 to the slavinken (a little too salty). Miss A liked the appelmoes, not so much on the slavinken. She ate one without the prosciutto though. The appelmoes tastes more like apple pie filling than applesauce, and I think it would be good (if less healthy) with brown sugar crumble over the top. That would make it dessert, rather than a side dish though, and as it was, it’s a pretty easy and healthy side dish. We dipped the slavinken in ketchup (ketchup!) and that was a good match for it, believe it or not.

All in all, it was a really easy meal to make, reasonably healthy, the kids had fun and it was easy for them to get involved. I would certainly put the appelmoes into the rotation as a side dish, and I’d try the slavinken again with bacon wrapped around instead of prosciutto. It’s nice that it doesn’t take too long, but still had enough stuff for the kids to get their hands dirty with. A very fun time.

Well, your question got me wondering… duck is not a very common dish in Brazil, in fact I could only think of one, called “pato no tucupi”

That would be extremely hard to reproduce, because one of the ingredients (tucupi and also another one called tacaca – accent on the second “ca”) – would be almost impossible to find in the US. It is more like a stew, and to be honest, not my favorite type of duck (I am fond of the crispy skin… 🙂

I think the “pato no tucupi” is the one we read about in a description of Brazilian foods that Miss A locked onto, but we didn’t review the recipe that carefully yet. Perhaps you have another traditional Brazilian dish that you would recommend? We may be able to divert her from duck. 🙂 (We prefer the crispy skin variety too!) And the cheese bread was delicious! I’m so glad we found your blog! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you sallybr! I came across your site today as we’re looking for Brazilian recipes. You have some great recipes! We’re going to try your Brazilian Cheese Bread recipe tomorrow. Would you happen to know of any good Brazilian duck recipes? Miss A really wants a duck recipe for next week and I haven’t had much luck finding one online. I’ll probably hit the bookstore this week for a cookbook. Thanks for checking out our site!

What’s cookin’…

Having returned from our 7-month European sabbatical, we're returning to the kitchens and neighborhoods in our own backyard with a focus on culture, education, history and delicious food. #EatPlayWorld

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